... The project has two phases: firstly we make use of existing software and hardware as
well as implementing simple browsers for the user's workstations, based on an analysis of
the requirements for information access needs by experiments. Secondly, we extend the
application area by also allowing the users to add new material.

Phase one should take 3 months with the full manpower complement, phase two a further 3
months, but this phase is more open-ended, and a review of needs and wishes will be
incorporated into it.

The manpower required is 4 software engineers and a programmer, (one of which could be a
Fellow). Each person works on a specific part (eg. specific platform support) ...Tim Berners-Lee , R. Cailliau

W W Why are they green?
"Because I see all "W"s as green..." Robert Cailliau: Recently I
discovered that I'm a synaesthetic. Well, I've known it for a long time, but I did
not realise that there was a name for it. I'm one of those people who combine two senses:
for me, letters have colours. Only about one in 25'000 have this condition,
which is perfectly harmless and actually quite useful. Whenever I think of words,
they have colour patterns. For example, the word "CERN" is yellow,
green, red and brown, my internal telephone number, "5005" is black, white,
white, black. The effect sometimes works like a spelling checker: I know I've got
the right or the wrong number because the colour pattern is what I remember or
not...

And now wait for it folks: you have all seen the World-Wide Web logo ofthree superimposed
"W"s. Why are they green? Because I
see all "W"s as green... It would look
horrible to me if they were any other colour.
So, it's not because it is a "green" technology, although I also like that...

So, here I am:twenty years of work at CERN: control engineering,
user-interfaces, text processing, administrative computing support, hypertexts and finally the Web.

According to R. Cailliau the chain of historical scale events was going by the following way:

1990

CERN: A Joint proposal for a hypertext system is presented to the management.

Mike Sendall buys a NeXT cube for evaluation, and gives it to Tim. Tim's prototype
implementation on NeXTStep is made in the space of a few months, thanks to the
qualities of the NeXTStep
software development system.
This prototype offers WYSIWYG browsing/authoring! Current
Web browsers used in "surfing the Internet" are mere passive windows, depriving
the user of the possibility to contribute.

During some sessions in the CERN cafeteria, Tim and I try to find a catching
name for the system. I was determined that the name should not yet again be taken
from Greek mythology. Tim proposes "World-Wide Web". I like
this very much, except that it is difficult to pronounce in French...

1991

The prototype is very impressive, but the NeXTStep system is not widely spread. A
simplified, stripped-down version (with no editing facilities) that can be easily adapted
to any computer is constructed: the Portable "Line-Mode Browser".

In the second generation, Marc Andreessen and Eric
Bina developed NCSA Mosaic at the University of Illinois.

Several million then suddenly noticed that the Web might be better than sex.

In the third generation, Andreessen and Binaleft
NCSA to found Netscape...

Ether Microsoft and Netscape
open some new fronts in escalatingWeb
Wars, By Bob Metcalfe, InfoWorld,
August 21, 1995, Vol. 17, Issue 34.

Meanwhile -- between these generations -- a lot of historical scale events happened.
Eric W. Sink clarifies
some of them:

Life in the browser wars was a unique time period for me in my career...

I started work on Spyglass Mosaic on April 5th, 1994.
The demo for our first prospective customer was already on the calendar in May.
... Yes, we licensed the technology and trademarks from NCSA (at the University of Illinois),
but we never used any of the code.
We wrote our browser implementations completely from scratch, on Windows, MacOS, and Unix.

... Netscape didn't even exist yet, but things happened fast.
Just a few weeks after I started coding, Jim Clark rode into town and gathered a select group of programmers from NCSA.
Mosaic Communications Corporation was born. It was interesting to note that certain people on the
NCSA browser team were not invited to the special meeting.
I can still remember hearing about how ticked off they were to be excluded. Champaign-Urbana is a very small town.

Spyglass had the legal right to the "Mosaic" trademark. A few tantrums and lots of lawyering later,
MCC changed its name to Netscape.

We thought we had a nice head start on Netscape.
We had a really top-notch team and we moved the rest of our developers over to browser work quickly.
We were ready to compete with anybody. But Jim Clark was, after all, Jim Clark.
His SGI-ness knew how to work the advantages of being in Silicon Valley.
He provided his young company with lots of press coverage and very deep pockets.

We decided to approach this market with an OEM business model.
Instead of selling a browser to end users we developed core technology and sold it to corporations
who in turn provided it to their end users.
We considered ourselves to be the arms dealer for the browser wars.
Over 120 companies licensed Spyglass Mosaic so they could bundle it into their product.
Our stuff ended up in books, operating systems, ATM machines, set-top boxes, help systems, and kiosks.
It was an extremely profitable business. The company grew fast and ours was one of the first Internet IPOs.

Along the way, we got involved in the standards process.
In fact, I became the chair of the IETF HTML Working Group for the standardization of HTML 2.0.
I learned a lot through this experience.
In May 1994 I went to the first WWW conference in Geneva, Tim Berners-Lee took me aside and shared his plans for
a World-Wide Web Consortium. It didn't take too long for the W3C to become the venue for HTML standards discussions.
Eventually this was A Good Thing. Both Netscape and Microsoft became active participants in the W3C HTML Working Group.
Any group which didn't have their involvement was doomed to irrelevance.

For much of 1994, it seemed like we were ahead of Netscape.
Shortly after we released our 2.0 version, I remember one of the Netscape developers griping about
how their schedule had been moved up by six months. We smiled because we knew we were the reason.
They had not been taking us seriously and they were being forced to do so.

But Netscape was running at a much faster pace.
They got ahead of us on features and they began to give their browser away at no cost to end users.
This made Netscape the standard by which all other browsers were judged.
If our browser didn't render something exactly like Netscape, it was considered a bug.
I hated fixing our browser to make it bug-compatible with Netscape even though we had already coded
it to "the standard". Life's not fair sometimes.

We won the Microsoft deal. I suppose only the higher echelons of Spyglass management really know
the gory details of this negotiation.
I was asked to be the primary technical contact for Microsoft and their effort to integrate our browser into Windows 95.
I went to Redmond and worked there for a couple of weeks as part of the "Chicago" team.
It was fun, but weird. They gave me my own office.
At dinner time, everyone went to the cafeteria for food and then went back to work.
On my first night, I went back to my hotel at 11:30pm. I was one of the first to leave.

Internet Explorer 2.0 was basically Spyglass Mosaic with not too many changes.
IE 3.0 was a major upgrade, but still largely based on our code.
IE 4.0 was closer to a rewrite, but our code was still lingering around --
we could tell by the presence of certain esoteric bugs that were specific to our layout engine.

Licensing our browser was a huge win for Spyglass.
And it was a huge loss. We got a loud wake-up call when we tried to schedule our second conference
for our OEM browser customers. Our customers told us they weren't coming because Microsoft was beating them up.
The message became clear: We sold our browser technology to 120 companies, but one of them slaughtered the other 119.

The time between IE 3 and IE 4 was a defining period for Spyglass.
It was clear that the browser war had become a two-player race.

- Even with our IPO stash, we didn't have the funding to keep up with Netscape.
- What was interesting was the day we learned that Netscape didn't have the funding to keep up with Microsoft.

For the development of IE 4.0, a new Program Manager appeared.
His name was Scott Isaacs and I started seeing him at the HTML standards group meetings.
At one of those meetings we sat down for a talk which was a major turning point for me and for Spyglass.
Scott told me that the IE team had over 1,000 people.

I was stunned. That was 50 times the size of the Spyglass browser team.
It was almost as many people as Netscape had in their whole company.
I could have written the rest of the history of web browsers on that day -- no other outcomes were possible ...

According to Gary
Wolf, "Andreessen
also left the NCSA, departing in December 1993 with the
intention of abandoning Mosaic development altogether. He moved to California and took a
position with a small software company. But within a few months he had quit his new job
and formed a partnership with SGI founder Jim Clark.

"At the NCSA," Andreessen explains, "the deputy director suggested that we
should start a company, but we didn't know how. We had no clue. How do you start something
like that? How do you raise the money? Well, I came out here and met Jim, and all of a
sudden the answers starting falling into place."

In March, Andreessen and Clark flew back to Illinois, rented a suite at the University
Inn, and invited about half a dozen of the NCSA's main Mosaic developers over for a chat.
Clark spent some time with each of them alone. By May, virtually the entire ex-NCSA
development group was working for Mosaic Communications (it was an original name of the Netscape
Communications -G.R.G.).

Andreessen answers accusations that corporate Mosaic Communications "raided"
nonprofit NCSA by pointing out that with the explosion of commercial interest in Mosaic,
the developers were bound to be getting other offers to jump ship. "We originally
were going to fly them out to California individually over a period of several
weeks," Andreessen explains, "but Jim and I said, Waita second, it does not make
much sense to leave them available to be picked up by other companies. So we flew out to
Illinois at the spur of the moment."

Since Mosaic Communications now has possession of the core team of Mosaic developers from
NCSA, the company sees no reason to pay any licensing fees for NCSA Mosaic. Andreessen and
his team intend to rewrite the code, alter the name, and produce a browser that looks
similar and works better. The Anti-Gates

Clark and Andreessen have different goals. For Jim Clark, whose old company led the
revolution in high-end digital graphics, Mosaic Communications represents an opportunity
to transform a large sector of the computer industry a second time. For Andreessen, Mosaic
Communications offers a chance to keep him free from the grip of a company he sees as one
of the forces of darkness - Microsoft.

"If the company does well, I do pretty well," says Andreessen. "If
the company doesn't do well" - his voice takes on a note of mock despair - "I work at Microsoft."

The chair of Microsoft is anathema to many
young software developers, but to Andreessen he is a particularly appropriate nemesis...

As I ( Gary Wolf) reviewed my
notes from interviews with Andreessen, I was struck by the thought that he may have
conjured the Bill Gates nemesis out of the subtle miasma of his own ambivalence. After all
it is he, not the programmers in Redmond, Washington, who is writing a proprietary Web
browser. It is he, not Bill Gates, who is at the center of the new, ambitious industry. It
is he who is being forced by the traditional logic of the software industry to operate
with a caution that verges on secrecy, a caution that is distinctly at odds with the open
environment of the Web."

The (Second Phase of the) Revolution Has Begun,
By Gary Wolf, Wired 2.10

There are two ages of the Internet - beforeMosaic, and after.
The combination of Tim Berners-Lee's Web protocols, which provided connectivity,
and Marc Andreesen's browser, which provided a
great interface, proved explosive. In twenty-four
months, the Web has gone from being unknown to absolutely ubiquitous.

Microsoft may still be No. 2 in the Internet race, but it's rapidly
closing the gap. What's more, Microsoft has forgotten more about PR
and marketing than Netscape ever learned.

The contrast between the two companies was highlighted the day after Clark
induced mass sedation when Microsoft's group vice president, Paul Maritz,
wowed the crowd with the kind of polished, four-star presentation that the Redmondians
seem to be able to do with their eyes closed.

Just like his boss, Maritz promised a lot of stuff that's still

not here. But he generatedexcitement
and energy and buzz. The upshot was to create the kind of halo effect
that will pay dividends when it comes time for developers and corporate shoppers to
make their buying and investment decisions. ....

Mark Andreessen:
I dont think it's a matter of good and
evil -- Microsoft is a a competitor, and a smart one. Jim(Clark)
and I both think it's important to point out what Microsoft is doing in
various areas, since they are very good at using FUD [fear,
uncertainty, doubt] to attempt to paralize
the market.

Why Bill
Gates wants to be the next Marc
Andreessen, Wired, 3.12, p.236.

"God
is on the side of the big battalions."
said Napoleon. Very few times in warfare
have smaller forces overtaken bigger forces...

byNetscape's Jim Barksdale,
Wired 4.03, March 1996.

iNapoleon's
Timeline:

December, 1995:
i-Pearl Harbor

"Pearl Harbor Day." Time Magazine reported it when Bill Gates
declared war on December
7, 1995...Jeff Sutherland

February, 1996: 2-year Prediction

Steve Jobs: We have a two-yearwindow.
If the Web doesn't reach ubiquity in the next two years, Microsoft
will own it.
And that will be the end of it. Wire, February 1996,
p.162

June, 1996: How many...?

Question: Netscape
has certainly come on awfullystrong. Bill Gates: How
many software developers do you think theyhave? The world according
to Gates By Don Tennant, InfoWorld Electric, Jan 4, 1996.

The turn-point in the Browser's WarThe Web Browser Marketshare dramatically changed for a couple of month.

. . . . .As an ISP, I want to give my customers a
software package for their use. I contacted Netscape.

- They said they would let be customize and repackage their product, if I committed to buy
2500 the first year at $17 each.

I said OK, I can do that.

- Then they said, great please send your check for 50% of the moneys due.

That's $21,250. As a small ISP I dont have that available without dipping into my
reserves.

I am then contacted by Microsoft and was told they would send me this really nice
customization kit, which will build a release for Win95, Win NT, Win3.1 and install
Explorer 3, Netmeeting, a commercial TCP dialer and stack. And it has a automated user
sign up server built into it.

It will build a CD Rom image, if I want to distribute that way.
It configures with a wizard in about 5 minutes.
It's seamless and a really good piece of software and installer.

I said that it sounded great,how much?
- No charge. Distribute it all you want to your customers. Have fun.

Microsoft is such a monster company that they can drop multi millions into
development of a product package that they will give away.

Netscape on the other hand actually wants to make a bit of money on their product.

Thinking of myself first, I took the Microsoft software.
So will most other ISP's...

To be, or not to be: that is
the question ...yet and Netscape browser still exists

The market war between two leading browsers is
over. Like it or not, but now Internet Explorer is the fully dominant one. Only
about 2 - 3 percentage of the Web surfing people for some reasons (mostly for the reasons
resembling religious ones) still use Netscape browser. But as long as the Netscape
browser still exist, almost all front-end Web developers around the world are forced to
spend about 10 - 15 percentage of their paid time to provide both of these two browsers
with compatible layout & DHTML solutions. Just try to imagine what the total price of
all this essentially worthless work on the world wide scale is.

They Shoot Horses,
Don't They?

5 years later ...

December
2007, Netscape announced that support for its Netscape
Navigator would be discontinued, suggesting its users
migrate to Mozilla Firefox

First 15
Years of the Browsers Wars as it
looks from the January, 2011: